The Good Maharaja: How a Princely State in India Became a Refuge for Polish Children During the Second World War

When Feliks Scazighino was just six years old, the world as he knew it collapsed. Along with millions of other Polish civilians in 1940, his family was forcibly removed from their home in Kresy—then the eastern region of Poland—by Soviet authorities following the Red Army’s invasion of the territory in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. They were deported in a freezing, overcrowded railway convoy to a gulag in Siberia, part of Stalin’s campaign to eradicate the Polish elite and intelligentsia through forced labour and political terror.

“We were taken to Siberia—me, my mother, brother, grandparents, aunt, and our nanny,” Scazighino recalled many decades later from his home in Canada. “I remember all our illnesses, the hunger. In the end, we looked like skeletons.”

Their ordeal lasted nearly two years. Following Germany’s 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Stalin, under diplomatic pressure from the newly allied British and Polish governments-in-exile, agreed to an ‘amnesty’ for many Polish citizens. Those who survived the gulags and labour camps were released, but with nowhere to go and no home to return to. Many, like Scazighino, ended up in Tehran, the first safe haven in a series of makeshift displacements across Asia and the Middle East.

It was from this desperate exodus that an unlikely figure emerged to alter the course of young lives: Maharaja Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja, ruler of the princely state of Nawanagar in British India. Known as Jam Saheb, he opened his arms to Polish children fleeing Soviet oppression. Nearly a thousand of them found safety, shelter, and even joy under his protection.

A Forgotten Holocaust in the East

The history of Polish suffering during the Second World War is often framed through the lens of Nazi occupation. Less commonly discussed is the Soviet campaign of repression in eastern Poland. After the 1939 invasion, around 1.7 million Polish civilians—men, women, and children—were deported by Stalin’s regime to Siberia, Kazakhstan, and Arctic Russia.

Conditions in the camps were brutal. Entire families were forced into hard labour, malnutrition was rampant, and disease was common. As historian Norman Davies wrote in Heart of Europe, “Of the estimated two million deportees, at least one half were dead within a year of their arrest.” The 1941 ‘amnesty’ granted many a reprieve, but with no functioning Polish government or homes to return to, they became refugees overnight.

Those who were able to escape Soviet territory began making their way south through Central Asia. With assistance from the Polish Armed Forces, some were evacuated through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to Iran, where Allied authorities and the Red Cross tried to organise support. From there, children and women were dispatched to places as far-flung as Mexico, Kenya, New Zealand—and India.

“A Little Poland” in Jamnagar

Scazighino and his brother Roger were separated from their mother in Tehran and sent on to Bombay (now Mumbai), before being transported by train to Jamnagar. It was there, at the Maharaja’s summer estate in Balachadi, that a unique refugee settlement was built.

“I was about eight and Roger was six-and-a-half when we arrived,” he later said. “The older boys taught me how to swim by throwing me into the Maharaja’s pool.”

Balachadi was not just a holding camp. It was designed as a home, carefully planned with dignity and cultural preservation in mind. A school was established. A hospital staffed by Polish and Indian doctors provided healthcare. The children were free to play in the gardens and squash courts and swim in the Maharaja’s pool. A Polish flag flew proudly above the camp, and efforts were made to maintain traditions like Scouting and the Catholic faith.

According to Anuradha Bhattacharjee, whose 2012 book The Second Homeland documented the Polish refugee experience in India, the Maharaja embodied the Sanskrit principle of vasudhaiva kutumbakam—“the world is one family.” He personally took an interest in the welfare of the children. One refugee, Wiesław Stypuła, recalled being told: “Please tell the children they are no longer orphans because I am their father.”

A Maharaja With a Polish Heart

Maharaja Digvijaysinhji’s empathy towards Poland was not born of political duty but personal conviction. His father, Ranjitsinhji, had been close friends with the Polish pianist and statesman Ignacy Paderewski. The young Maharaja had met Paderewski in Geneva and developed an early admiration for Polish culture. When the call came for safe refuge for displaced Polish children, he offered more than shelter—he offered belonging.

A second camp for Polish civilians was later established in 1943 at Valivade, in what was then the princely state of Kolhapur (now Maharashtra), for older refugees and families. Between 1942 and 1948, over 5,000 Polish refugees passed through India. While the exact number is difficult to establish, their impact—and the country’s generosity—remains deeply embedded in the memory of survivors and their descendants.

Growing Up Between Worlds

Among the Maharaja’s own family, the refugees were not seen as outsiders. His children, Princess Hershad Kumari and Prince Shatrusalyasinhji, played alongside their Polish peers. They shared schoolrooms, festivals, and traditions—Christmas and Diwali celebrated side-by-side. His nephew, Sukhdevsinhji Jadeja, later recalled football matches with the Polish boys and remembered how “my uncle didn’t just accommodate them—he adopted them.”

Not all Polish refugees stayed. As the war ended, many faced the agonising decision of whether to return to a now-communist Poland, remain in India, or seek new lives elsewhere. Scazighino’s post-India journey took him through Tehran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine, before finally reaching Port Said in Egypt, and then Glasgow. In London, he was reunited with his father—himself a wartime refugee and radio broadcaster.

“If the war hadn’t happened, I would have grown up a spoilt little rich boy in Poland,” Scazighino reflected. “Instead, I was a poor immigrant in a world that wasn’t very friendly to poor immigrants.”

A Legacy Carried Forward

After Indian independence in 1947, princely states were merged into the Republic of India, and the story of wartime refugee camps faded into the background. Yet, for those whose lives were transformed, the memory endured.

Survivors such as Scazighino and Danuta Urbikas, whose mother and sister were also refugees in India, helped keep the story alive through books, interviews, and reunions. The Association for Poles in India continues to meet biennially, and some survivors have returned to Balachadi, now a military school, to lay commemorative plaques and honour the Maharaja’s legacy.

In 2018, the Polish Embassy in India organised a centennial celebration at Balachadi for Poland’s independence, bringing survivors and descendants back to the very soil that had once offered them safety.

A Square, A School, and a Promise Fulfilled

Today, the Maharaja is honoured in Poland as a national hero. In Warsaw, Skwer Dobrego Maharadzy—the Square of the Good Maharaja—is a quiet memorial garden, tucked between the streets of a free country he once helped from afar. Not far from it stands the Maharaja Jam Saheb Digvijaysinhji High School, founded in 1999 by Bednarska High School, fulfilling a promise made decades earlier.

“How can we thank you for your generosity?” General Władysław Sikorski had asked the Maharaja during the war. His reply: “You could name a school after me when Poland has become a free country again.”

Bartosz Pielak, vice principal of the school, explained its ethos: “Each year more people learn about the story of Jam Saheb, especially now as Europe grapples with the challenges of migration. His example reminds us what true compassion looks like.”

An Enduring Message in a Divided World

In today’s climate of rising nationalism and fear of migration, the Maharaja’s story offers a poignant counterpoint. His act of courage, compassion, and quiet diplomacy during one of history’s darkest hours continues to resonate—especially with those whose childhoods were stolen by war.

This is not just a tale of survival. It is a story of cultural exchange, unexpected kinship, and the power of empathy across borders. Without fanfare or political calculation, one Indian prince reshaped the futures of a thousand children who had lost everything. And in doing so, he earned a place in history—not through conquest or wealth, but through kindness.

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